


Okay, Fine, Probably

by Duck_Life



Category: X-Force (Comics)
Genre: Attempted Sexual Assault, Friendship, Gen, Recovery, Trauma, Wine, aftermath of attempted rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-21 08:55:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19999246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: Tabby in the aftermath of X-Force (2008) #18. (Rogue in the after-aftermath of Uncanny X-Men #236).





	Okay, Fine, Probably

**Author's Note:**

> During X-Force (2008), Warpath shows up and kills two H.A.M.M.E.R. guys as one of them is preparing to rape Boom-Boom. It never really gets addressed after that so... this is me addressing it.

When she wakes up, it’s sudden and jolting. One second she’s out, and the next, she’s thrust painfully back into reality. At least she’s out of H.A.M.M.E.R’s clutches. She recognizes the infirmary right away, can even make out Josh, Nori and Julian in the beds beside her. 

Tabby looks down to see that she’s wearing a hospital gown, and the realization that someone had to take off what she was wearing and put this on, while she was unconscious… that realization makes her stomach turn. 

“ _... have a little fun… _ ”

No. Don’t think about that. It’s fine, she tells herself. You’re fine. 

“Jimmy?” 

“Hmf? Hey,” Jimmy says, jerking awake. He must have drifted off in the chair beside her infirmary bed. “Hey, I’m here. Are you okay?”

Tabby blinks. “Yeah, I’m fine.” She feels simultaneously exhausted and antsy, like she needs to run somewhere but if she makes a move she’ll collapse. “I feel fine. Are  _ you _ okay?”

“I’m always okay,” Jimmy says, smiling at her. “Listen, I’m gonna let Dr. Reyes know you’re awake—”

“Wait,” she says, because he started standing up like he was going away and she suddenly really, really can’t have him leaving, needs him here, needs to know that he’s alive and she’s alive and everything is really and truly over. “Wait, just—”

“Yeah, don’t worry,” Jimmy promises sinking back into his seat. “I’m here. I won’t go anywhere, Tab.” 

* * *

She gets well enough to venture out of the infirmary, but memories of the night plague her like big fat flies. She keeps seeing the face of the man who… the man who almost...

“I wanted to kill him, Domino,” she says, tucking her arms around herself. “I never wanted to kill somebody so much. But… whatever they doped me with, it made it so I couldn’t control my powers. I never wanted to make a timebomb so bad and I couldn’t do it. And he… he…” She shudders; her hand rests over her neck, feeling the memory even though the bruises are gone. “If Jimmy hadn’t shown up… Jesus Christ, if Jimmy hadn’t’ve shown up…”

Dom’s maternalism typically comes out in a fierce protectiveness. Tabby’s seeing another side now, a side of her that is quiet and calming and soft. And even so, Tabby can’t stop fixating on what happened. On why it happened. On what she was wearing. 

“Stupidest fucking thing,” Tabby says, shaking. “I was in the Victoria’s Secret dressing room when they nabbed me. I couldn’t even  _ afford _ that damn lingerie but I just… everything’s been so awful lately. I just wanted to do something fun, I just wanted to look good and feel good, just for a second.” She laughs, darkly. “I got kidnapped while I was wearing lingerie. I mean, really, what’d I expect to happen?” 

“Don’t,” Neena tells her. “Don’t talk like that.”

“I’m just saying. If I’d been wearing normal clothes, maybe—”

“Hey, no,” Neena says, slipping into the angry team mom voice that Tabby remembers from their X-Force days. “It wouldn’t have mattered if you were wearing street clothes. It wouldn’t have mattered if you were wearing nothing. Those bastards were monsters, and they acted like monsters, and what you were wearing didn’t have anything to do with it.” 

* * *

Logan keeps pushing and pushing for more details, and she  _ knows _ it’s because he’s worried about the Kinney chick, but Tabs has had enough. Reliving one of the worst nights of her life is only fun the first two times, and then it gets old. She needs out of this room, but Logan won’t stop asking for more information. 

“What did they say to you? What did they look like?”

“One of them was named Mick,” Tabby says, and the name feels like acid in her mouth. “He tried to… he was going to rape me. And if Jimmy hadn’t’ve shown up, he would have. Is that what you wanted me to tell you, Wolverine?” And then she runs from the room and doesn’t stop until her legs give out and she sinks to the floor.

Jimmy finds her there and doesn’t even say anything, just sits down on the floor next to her. She’s staring at her hands and weighing her priorities. 

“They turned me into a bomb. They tried to turn me into a human bomb,” Tabby recounts. “The Sapien League, I mean. They were gonna dose me with the Legacy Virus.  _ That _ should be the thing that I’m more messed up about, right? Not…”

“Tab…” Jimmy sighs. They’re safe now, backs up against the wall. Nobody is trying to kill them right this second. “Whatever you’re feeling… there’s no right and wrong way to react, okay?”

“I know,” she mumbles. A tiny ball of energy appears in her palm and grows, and grows, and grows, and then she disables it before it can go off. 

* * *

Domino approaches Tabby while she’s curled up in the quietest corner she can find with a bottle of cheap red wine. “Tab… I think you should talk to someone.”

Tabby stares at her. “Like a therapist?”

“That’s an option,” Neena assures her. “But actually, I have someone in mind.”

* * *

Rogue slides down the wall to sit beside Tabby. “Hey, shug,” she says, friendly but not throwing up a fake smile or anything. Tabby likes that. “Mind if I have a swig?” Tabby hands over the wine bottle and Rogue tips it back. She wipes her mouth with the back of her glove when she’s done, and then she wrinkles her nose. “Awful. Ugh, fuckin’ Cajun. He keeps making me try all these fancy wines and completely ruined cheap wine for me. You know I used to drink box wine with a straw? Like a Capri Sun, I mean. Now look at me.” She sighs dramatically. 

“Uh-huh.” Tabby takes her bottle back and drinks deep. “So what did Dom tell you?”

“Only that she thinks it would do you good to talk to me,” Rogue says, drawing her knees in. “But that’s for you to decide. If you want, we can sit here in silence for 20 minutes, and I’ll tell Neena we had a great big conversation and you’re all good now. Up to you.”

It’s a possibility. Tabitha drinks some more wine. “So,” she says finally, and then she tells Rogue the whole story. How Laura Kinney saved her from the Leper Queen before being hauled away. How the guys from H.A.M.M.E.R. all stormed in just when she thought her nightmare was finally over. The casual way they talked about “disposing of the mutant.” But first… but first…

_ “Not to say we can’t have a little fun first.” A hand on her throat, on her wrist, too drugged out of her mind from whatever the Sapien League did to her to even fight back, to even make a single stupid fucking timebomb.  _

_ “Make it fast, Mick,” his buddy says, and the creep is— is—  _

_ Dead.  _

_ The knife point sticks out from right beneath his jaw. Jimmy’s certainly improved his aim. Tabby tastes blood on her mouth, knows it’s covering her hair and face.  _

Tabby drinks her wine and tries to forget the feeling of Mick’s blood spattering on her face.

Rogue deliberates for a while, starting a few sentences and then stopping midway through, trying to decipher the best way to phrase what she wants to say. Ultimately, she starts with, “You’ve been to Genosha, yeah? During the whole…” She waves her hand vaguely, which Tabitha’s just fine with. The less said about her time in Genosha, the better. 

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, okay,” Rogue says, taking a sip from the bottle. “Wolvie and I got captured and put in custody in Genosha… this was way back when, ’course, before Hodge, before Philip Moreau and Jenny Ransome ever came to the States. Well, there’s that one mutate, Wipeout. And he… you know what he did, he took our powers away. Logan couldn’t heal and I couldn’t… could… Folks could touch me, I mean.” 

“And they did. And that was all they did, y’know, touched me and grabbed and groped. And I kept thinkin’, ‘It could’ve been worse.’ And you know what? Yeah. It  _ could’ve _ been worse. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t fucking awful. 

Same goes for you, you know. You’re allowed to feel however it is you feel about what you went through.”

“Why’re you being so nice to me?” Tabby asks, cradling her bottle of wine protectively, like it’s a baby, or a bomb. “You barely know me.”

“You’re an X-Man,” Rogue points out. “We take care of our own. And… even if you weren’t… nobody should have to deal with this shit alone.” 

“Like you did?”

“Nah, I wasn’t alone,” Rogue says. “I had Carol Danvers with me. In here.” She taps the side of her head. 

Tabby whistles. “That must’ve been nice. Wish I could get me one of those. My own personal superhero.”

“I think that’s the thing, is, you gotta be your own personal superhero.” Even as she says it, she cringes. 

Tabby cracks up. “That’s the lamest thing you’ve ever said.” 

“Nah, lamest thing I ever said had to be ‘He looks more nervous than a long-tailed cat in a rocking chair factory,’” Rogue says. “Look, my point stands. You’re gonna be okay, okay? I’ll make sure.”

“You’ll ‘make sure’?” 

“If you aren’t okay, come and get me,” Rogue says. “I’ll take you out somewhere we can punch a bunch of bad guys until you feel okay. Always worked for me.” 

“Thanks, Rogue,” Tabby says, settling back against the wall with her wine. She’s not okay, but Rogue is right, probably. She probably is going to be okay. Today, that’s enough. 


End file.
